Jamal Igle On His One Year Anniversary on Supergirl

It’s hard to believe that it has been a year since the Supergirl renaissance in her title starting in Supergirl #34. Over on Jamal Igle’s blog, he posts about the one year anniversary of his time on Supergirl (http://jamaligle.blogspot.com/2009/10/supergirl-one-year-later.html). Here is his post:

Before I left for Jamaica, the day before I left I turned in the last seven pages of Supergirl #46. 12 issues ago I was announced as the artist of the series. In fact at the time I started working on it Catie was 4 months old, Karine had just returned to work a few weeks before and we were trying to figure out how to be parents.

I'm still trying to figure out the parenting thing however so much has happened. I came to the project with some preconceived notions and was happily disappointed, not just by Sterling's immense talent as a writer but the whole experience of working with the Superman characters.I want to say thanks to all of you who've supported our run. I want to say thanks to Nei Ruffino, Keith Champagne, Jon Sibal, Tom Chu, Pete Pantanzis and Jared Fletcher, I'm enjoying the work more than I have any project in a while and proud to have you guys as my partners. Thank you Matt Idelson, Nachie Castro, Wil Moss, Sean Ryan and Geoff Johns for giving me the shot. I was in Matt Idelson's office discussing what's going to be happening with issue 50 and it's gonna be nuts. It's just the beginning to Supergirl 2010 and I'm proud to be a part of it!


I was interested about Igle’s ‘preconceived notions’ about the title and was trying to think back that far. At this point last year, Kelley Puckett’s ‘Saving Thomas’ storyline had just ended with a thud. There were some high points to that arc (a suddenly caring Supergirl willing to bend the rules to help someone, some nicely timed humor, Drew Johnson’s art) but overall the Supergirl character felt lost.

She was still reeling from her characterization under Jeph Loeb and Joe Kelly. Their Supergirl was angry, angsty, apathetic to others, unheroic. She was, at least to me, unlikeable.

The uneven approach to Kara over the length of the series made the book almost unreadable. And sales showed that.

So I asked Igle what his preconceived notions were and got an eloquent response that pretty much mirrored my own thoughts.

Well the big one was, I didn't like what they had done with the character. I'm not a fan of Jeph Loeb's writing work, I just found her to be unappealing as a character. You have to like the characters you're working with or it's just not worth the effort. So when I was approached about doing it I asked who the writer was and find out it's some new guy I'd barely heard about named Sterling Gates. Not to sound egotistical but I've worked with some of the best writers in the business So Sterling had, at the time, a lot to prove to me. So when I read the script to issue #34 (which I can say now is the script that got him the job on the book in the first place) I was blown away by how good he was and how much love he had for Kara.

I'm old School, I've been reading the Superman books since I was 5 years old and while I don't have Mark Waid's encyclopedic knowledge I consider my self to be a huge Superman fan. I cried when kara died during Crisis, and as much fun as the Byrne relaunch was there were always things missing from the lore (Kandor, The Superpets, the connection to the Legion, The old school Lex Luthor because I hated the idea of Lex luthor having so much pull and being a corporate tycoon.) So when they brought her back as Clark's cousin I was thrilled until I read the first 5 issues of the regular series. It was a 40 year old man's concept of what an edgy teenage girl was supposed to be and it just didn't work for me as a fan.

All the things he says about the Kara that came before are exactly what I was thinking last year. I still think of that cover of a crystal gun wielding Supergirl standing over her dead classmates. Something was simply fundamentally wrong.

When the Gates and Igle team was announced, I thought to myself ‘it can’t get worse’ … damning with faint praise. I had never read anything that Sterling Gates had written. Would he try to bring back the Loeb version? Could a ‘rookie’ writer somehow save the book? I honestly thought the title was doomed for cancellation.

But the thing was, I can remember reading interviews with Gates when he was announced and he just said all the right things about Supergirl. He sounded liked he loved the character and wanted to bring her back to a semblance of the heroic Girl of Steel I grew up reading. After reading those interviews - many of which I covered here starting last June - I was suddenly, albeit cautiously, optimistic.

So here we are a year later … a year where Supergirl is suddenly a solid-selling title, a year where Supergirl as a character is suddenly a vital part of not only the Superman family but the DCU as a whole.

Funny how much can change in a year.

So, what were you guys thinking last year with Supergirl #34 just about to be released?